Redirects & 404 Errors
-
Hi everyone,
I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page.
I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there...
The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well.
Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!
-
Awesome Dan, thanks again for helping me out!
I implemented what you suggested and I'm still having the same issue. I think it has to do with the way the old URLs were setup, which included "index.php" before every folder (i.e. http://orchardsinn.com/index.php/specials)
When I implement the redirect:
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Then clear my cache and attempt to click the old link, it takes me to the site with a 404 error page. Then, when I try to navigate to another page via the navigation, they all return 404 errors.
Any thoughts?
-
Hey There
Yes that looks like the right format for 301. Make sure you're putting that below the default wordpress stuff.
If you want to redirect a bunch of pages all to one page you just do it like this;
Redirect 301 /photos-1/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-2/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-3/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
etc...
-
Hi Dan,
Thank you so much for taking the time to be so thorough in your answer! I really appreciate it. I attempted the htaccess redirects a little while back, but maybe I was doing them wrong. I have all of the old URLs in a csv, and they will all need to be redirected to new pages on the new site.
When I do the redirects in htaccess, they should look like this, correct?
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Also, If I have a few old pages (i.e. old photo gallery pages or a contact page), how can I redirect them all to the same new page? I think that was where I was having issues, but couldn't figure out what to do.
Again, I really appreciate your help, so thanks in advance!
-
Hmmm this could be tricky once it's starts becoming unclear what redirects were done where etc. I'd take a clean slate approach - note that to do this you have to have the OLD URLs somewhere - either in analytics, an old crawl, archive.org, webmaster tools etc;
- Gather up ALL old URLs from the sources listed above (old crawls, analytics, webmaster tools etc)
- Prepare any 301 redirects you need. I recommend using the .htaccess file. It's much easier to keep track of and have it all in once place.
- Disable the redirect plugin
- Remove any redirects from .htaccess
- Test the site to make sure they are all gone
- Put your new redirects all back into the .htaccess file
Now in theory you should have redirects ONLY in the .htaccess file. Test the site by crawling it. Test some of the old URLs and make sure they redirect.cYou can also put your old back links into Screaming Frog in list mode and check them.
I find the redirect plugin is OK but it's best to shut off any automatic creation of redirects.
-
Hi, can you please tell us your URL so we can look closer?
It appears to be the plugin you are using, probably you need to fix some parts of the code, I'm shooting to guess here... but you can probably set some redirect rules before the wordpress's rules to manage the old pages and then remove the plugin, which is causing the 404s on the 404s.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My homepage redirects to itself?
Hi there - I'm not a SEO so help would be appreciated! Moz is telling me we have a redirect loop but the URLs are the same. https://www.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/ Why is my homepage creating a redirect loop to itself? We use Wordpress and I do not have any redirects listed for our homepage. Could this have something to do with switching to https in April? Thanks, Katherine
Technical SEO | | kmmartin0 -
Spike in server errors
Hi, we've recently changed shopping cart platforms. In doing so a lot of our URL's changed, but I 301'ed all of the significant landing pages (as determined by G Analytics) prior to the switch. However, WMT is warning me about this spike in server errors now with all the pages that no longer exist. However they are only crawling them because they used to exist/are linked from pages that used to exist. and no longer actually exist. Is this something I should worry about? Or let it run its course?
Technical SEO | | absoauto0 -
Are these redirects damaging my rankings
Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page. | URL | Response Code | Detected |
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity | | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne | | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty | | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair | | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit | | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident | | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks |0 -
Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Buying multiple domains: misspells & .net, org, etc. & 301's
Hi, an SEO guy told me to buy up domains like ours X.org, net, biz, etc. & mispellings. this could cost over $100/year. Is is worth it for SEO or is it just covering our @ss if competitors want to get stupid and buy those? I don't forsee competitors doing that. What do you suggest? Does Google actually give us points for those AND if we bought them are we supposed to redirect all of them to our site? Should I be doing this for our SEO clients? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | JCunningham0 -
Code for redirect
What is the code to redirect www.xyz.com/abc where abc is a folder to www.xyz.com/abc.html
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Thoughts about stub pages - 200 & noindex ok, or 404?
With large database/template driven websites it is often possible to get a lot of pages with no content on them. What are the current thoughts regarding these pages with no content, options; Return a 200 header code with noindex meta tag Return a 404 page & header code Something else? Thanks
Technical SEO | | slingshot0 -
Redirect question
I would like to redirect http://example.com/index.html to http://www.example.com/ Is the code below correct ? RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}^example.comRewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050